


The Second Pilot

by TheSmudgyOne



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: AU, Gen, crossover fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-11 00:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2045397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSmudgyOne/pseuds/TheSmudgyOne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam Parrish knew about sacrifice. He had a lot of images of what a sacrifice to the ley line might look like, might feel like, might sound like. But none of them sounded anything like a stolen Jaeger being carried by an Aglionby helicopter. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>The Raven Cycle/Pacific Rim crossover fic. This is an AU of Adam's sacrifice to the ley like in The Raven Boys. Contains spoilers for The Raven Boys.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Second Pilot

When Adam heard the thrum of the blades, he knew exactly what it would be. He knew it in the strange way that a plot point in a fairytale both makes no sense, but makes perfect sense. But though he already knew, he peered into the sky, searching the darkness as he drove towards Cabeswater on winding roads. He wanted to see it. To understand. 

Adam Parrish knew about sacrifice. He had a lot of ideas about what a sacrifice to the ley line might look like, might feel like, might sound like. But none of them sounded anything like a stolen Jaeger being carried by an Aglionby helicopter. 

It was pitch dark, but the sound was close enough now to be unmistakable. It didn't have any lights on. There was no Kaiju alarm. No military training exercise. But still.

And then, just once, as the helicopter flew over a lit building, he saw the edges of a giant, dark shape in the sky, lit from below, looming. Adam felt the world around him bend - the darkness looking more endless, the floating Jaeger a giant whale in a black sea. Adam, so tiny. Too tiny for a ley line to even notice. 

He had to make it notice.

Adam pressed down on the accelerator.  
He kept his windows down, but the car still smelled like mint. As he drew closer to Cabeswater, Gansey's voice looped in Adam's head, over and over, reading from books, repeating the quote from his journal in car rides and at Nino's and in between classes:

_Fortunate is the soul who finds the sleeping king and is brave enough to share a dream with him. For he who shares a dream with him will call him to wakefulness, and the king will grant him a favor, as wondrous as can be imagined by a mortal man._

But Whelk wasn't going to wake Glendower. He was just going to wake the ley line. So why the Jaeger?

As he wove through twisting, hilly roads in the dark, Adam wondered how Glendower could have been woken in the time before Jaegers were invented. Were there other ways of sharing dreams? 

And how fortunate that Glendower was supposedly right here in Henrietta, home of Aglionby Military Academy, among the most prestigious academies in the world for training young men to be Jaeger pilots. The place where Glendower was awaiting a shared dream, was the place with more Jaegers ready for the stealing than anywhere in the US. Or possibly anywhere.   
 _coincindence?_

*

In the forest, Adam approached the Jaeger quietly on foot. It was night in the rest of Henrietta, but it was daytime in Cabeswater. The Jaeger was bathed in golden light.

It was a training unit, sized down for the training grounds owned by Aglionby, able to be carried by one giant metal-plated helicopter. But still big enough to fight small Kaiju, if the pilots were skilled. 

And next to the Jaeger, there was a large pentagram drawn in the dirt, and Neeve was tying up Barrington Whelk. Neeve had stolen the Jaeger.

"It's so rare that someone takes an interest in my methods," Neeve was murmuring to Whelk as she arranged little bones next to the pentagram.  
"Oh, I'm very interested in how the ritual works," Whelk said.

As Adam listened, he inched toward the Jaeger. The pentagram was on the ground, so he should have been focusing there. But he felt sure he had to see what was in the Jaeger. He felt something surrounding it, something in the air. A hunger.

Adam could see a lift attached precariously to the side of the Jaeger - there were cables and a small metal elevator-style metal cage. It looked like it could be ridden to the top, to enter the jaeger without all the cranes and tech that were used normally. 

"Well," Neeve said to Whelk, "The Kaiju all come out of the breach in this forest because of the ley line's energy. Once the line is woken, there may be an influx of Kaiju. I may need to escape in the Jaeger."

"It takes two people to pilot a Jaeger," Whelk said. 

Neeve just smiled and hummed a little tune, and that was her only response besides the dry click of the bones.

*

But three minutes later, Neeve was tied up next to the pentagram, and Whelk was twirling a knife. Everything had gone so wrong, so fast. Time in Cabeswater was always a strange thing, but this was no trick of magic. This was the work of guns, knives, and Barrington Whelk. 

Adam stepped out from behind the Jaeger and pointed his gun at Whelk.  
Instead of looking scared, Whelk smiled, and put his knife to Neeve's throat.  
"Drop the gun, or I'll slit her throat."  
And Adam dropped it.

Just like that, Adam was no longer Adam Parrish, Army of One. He wasn't even Adam Parrish, Soldier. He was nothing. A tiny speck next to all these powerful people and things. 

And then, when Adam thought it couldn't get any worse, a golden shape appeared through the trees, and Adam whispered,  
" _No._ " It was Ronan.   
   
*

Ronan and Whelk, swearing, scuffling for the gun. Ronan and Whelk, wrestling in the dirt, dangerously close to the pentagram. Whelk pinning Ronan's hands and tying him up. Adam saw it all as he silently ascended the lift to the cockpit.   
Whelk looked around the forest at eye level to see where Adam had disappeared to, then said to Ronan,  
"Looks like your friend ran scared."  
From up in the Jaeger, Adam whispered,  
"Don't believe him."

Adam kept one eye on the ground, watching. Whelk spent a minute flipping through Neeve's notes, frustrated, then tossed them aside and turned the gun on Neeve.  
"This isn't right. Something's missing. Tell me how to do the ritual you planned! Tell me!"

There were two suits in the cockpit. One hung empty, already attached and locked in. That wasn't protocol. 

The other suit lay on the floor in pieces, waiting. A small robot sat beside it. Adam looked at its control panel and pressed "suit up."  
The robot beeped to life, and helped assemble the suit pieces and neural attachments around Adam's body.   
It was cold, and it fit perfectly. Too perfectly. He thought he had probably wished it into fitting, without even realizing it. There was a strange fluid feeling in the air. The power of Cabeswater was heavy here. The power to transform things. The power to take things.

Adam worked on blind instinct now. And his instinct said he needed to draw. He had no ink or chalk, so he pulled off his glove and slit his palm on a sharp piece of metal. He drew a pentagram on the floor in blood, right around the empty spot for a pilot. 

The pentagram was sloppy, with none of the precision of the one Whelk was drawing on the ground.   
But Adam looked at what he had drawn, and he understood. The drawing didn't matter. The pilot did. 

Adam's hands began to shake. They hands were slippery and clumsy as he put his helmet on.   
He whispered,  
"I give you my hands. I give you my eyes." And stepped forward. 

It was quiet in the pentagram. Adam could no longer hear the shouting down below.   
Adam allowed the Jaeger to clap metal claws around his wrists and ankles, fasten at his spine, grab hold of his boots.  
And then, completely alone, with no one in the copilot seat, Adam pressed, _initiate neural handshake._

He waited. The machine charged to life. It continued to blink and whirr for far longer than they ever did with two pilots. More lights popped up on screens in front of him. A human brain on Adam's side, a glowing blur on the other. Adam tried not to picture bloody noses, convulsing bodies, the videos of lone jaeger pilots who had given their lives to the cause before the drift was invented.

_Prepare for neural handshake._

The machine stopped whirring. The lights all went dark. The glass on the control panel started to show a tiny crack. Then, all at once, it burst. The glass shattered, exploding outwards into a billion pieces of ground-glass dust that fell at Adam's feet.   
And then - _Latin._

A rush of Latin filled Adam's head. He began to feel a thirst that did not make sense. He was thirsty for sunlight. He reached and twisted upwards. Moss and vines slowly crept up his branches and rocks, then died and fell, then rose again. He felt the tickle from a fish swimming in a small pool of his water. He felt the fish vanish. The sensations flickered through him, things he had no words for, because no words existed. 

He felt Ronan painting words on him, in slow wet streaks. He felt feet in hiking boots pressing into his paths. He felt the warmth of Noah's blood soaking into his soil. He felt Noah's life surging into him, and that life surging out again as it was given to Gansey. He felt ghosts gliding down his lines, so many ghosts. And Blue again and again, saying, "what's your name? What's your name?"

Ronan speaking to him in Latin, the thrum and vibrations of his voice soaking into him like the rain, the light. _Graywaren_ and _Orphan Girl_ and _May I take it?_. 

  
He felt strange things appearing in his heart - coins, crowns, a woman, a thousand cars, one glass coffin.

"Neural interface drift initiated successfully," said the automated voice in his helmet. 

And all at once, Adam was himself again. But he was also not-himself, not-human. He was drifting with a forest. It was his copilot. 

  
And it wouldn't just be tonight. Adam would take off his helmet and work with his hands and walk on paved streets, but he would forever be drifting with Cabeswater.


End file.
